"Oh! This is a great day! It sees the establishment in perpetuity of our Republic, clean of all excesses, of all proscription, of all stain! Merciful as strength and right, fraternal as its own symbol, the first thought of the Republic has been to throw down the political scaffold, the scaffold, which, had the Republic been vanquished, it would have been made to dye purple with its own purest and most glorious blood! Contemplate it—loyal and generous, the Republic summons those very magistrates and generals, until yesterday implacable enemies of the republicans, whom they smote both with the sword of the Law and the sword of the Army, to join with it in a solemn pact of oblivion, of pardon and of concord, sworn to over the ashes of the latest martyrs of our rights! Oh, it is beautiful; it is noble, thus to reach out to our foes of yesterday a friendly and unarmed hand!"
"My children," put in Madam Lebrenn, "let us hope, let us believe that the martyrs of liberty, whose ashes we to-day render homage to, may be the last victims of royalty."
"Yes! Everywhere freedom is awakening!" cried Sacrovir Lebrenn enthusiastically. "Revolution in Vienna—revolution in Milan—revolution in Berlin—every day brings the tidings that the republican ferment of France has caused all the thrones of Europe to shake! The end of monarchy has arrived!"
"One army on the Rhine, another on the frontier of Italy—both ready to march to the support of our brothers of Europe," said George Duchene. "The Republic will make the rounds of the world! From that time on—no more wars, not so Monsieur Lebrenn? Union! The fraternity of the peoples! Universal peace! Labor! Industry! Happiness for all! No more insurrections, since the peaceful struggle of universal suffrage will henceforth replace the fratricidal struggles in which so many of our brothers have perished."
"Oh!" cried Velleda Lebrenn, who had watched her betrothed with sparkling eyes as he spoke. "How happy one must feel to live in times like these! What great and noble things are we not about to witness; not so, father?"
"To doubt it, my children, would be to deny the onward march, the constant progress of humanity," answered Lebrenn. "Never yet did mankind retrogress."
"May the good God hear you, Monsieur Lebrenn," put in father Morin. "Although I am quite old, I expect to see a good part of that beautiful picture. To want more than that, one must be quite a glutton," added the old man naïvely, and casting a tender look upon the merchant's daughter. "Could I, after that, still have anything to wish for, now that I know that this good and beautiful girl is to be the wife of my grandson? Is he not now a member of a family of good people? The daughter is worthy of the mother, the son is worthy of the father. Zounds! When one has seen all that, and is as old as I am, there is nothing more that the heart can wish for—one may take his leave with a contented mind."
"Take your leave, good father?" said Madam Lebrenn, taking and warming in her own one of the trembling hands of the old man. "And what about those who remain behind and love you?"
"And who will feel doubly happy," added Velleda embracing the grandfather, "if you remain to witness their happiness."
"And who desire to render homage in you, good father, and for many long years, to labor, to courage, and to a big good heart!" exclaimed Sacrovir in accents of respectful deference, while the old man, more and more moved, carried his tremulous and venerable hands to his eyes.